


the neon ghazal

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Androgyny, Aromantic Asexual Jade, Character Bashing, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, F/F, Gen, Malay Folklore, Singapore, Slight Dave Strider Bashing, Unrequited Crush, Urban Fantasy, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3164735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the city devours them, all light and cold steel kisses. and they dig the magic out of it with their fingernails till their hands are all bloody mud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the neon ghazal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainbowpui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbowpui/gifts).



> I know very little about how electricity works, how technomancy would work in practical theory, and about generally science and technology. Sorry if parts of this story is just me being gratuitous. I made stuff up as I went along.  
> I hope you enjoy anyway.

Jade wants to explore everything.

She’s had gum and chips and iced tea before(“I ordered stuff in boxes!” is the answer to every one of their questions and she won’t give more). But she’s never been inside a convenience shop. A sewing store. A Target, a Walmart, a Safeway, a McDonald’s- she knows how to tip and smile and take the train but it’s like she’s memorized a manual for things she’s never used. Rose watches her carefully. There’s the millisecond stutter of her fingers as she hands over change and accepts free samples from salesmen in supermarkets.

After a few months of their New Normal 2.0, John finally throws his hands up and says, “We need to get away from America.”

Privately, Rose agrees. They need to level the playing field. Dave _knowing absolutely everything_ about living in the U.S.A. is getting fucking tiresome.

The fact that the country has too many memories in it certainly doesn't factor.

The problem is none of them can decide exactly where they can go, together.

Dave’s their slick city boy-born and raised in a Southern pressure cooker with condos that rub up against the sky. John’s Maple Valley suburbia, not adverse to the city but not a fan of it either. Rose and Jade are the most isolated out of them both-Rose lived 4 miles away from the nearest grocery store. Though she can swear and put on her city face as best as any other urban girl can.

Jade, even with her island, truly grew up in Prospit, starkly illuminated like an LCD trip dream dripping ichor. Bigger and brighter than New York lights. She’s no slouch either. But her friends don’t know that.

“She lived on a fucking island, she’s basically Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I don’t want to choose anything too metropolitan. I just, y’know, don’t want to plunge her in the deep end. Like, if we moved to some monsterfucker of a city,” Dave says. “Let’s start small.”

“Even if you’re right, we shouldn’t treat Jade like she’s a child,” John protests.

“What do you propose, then, John?” Rose asks, intrigued.

He smiles.

***

The four of them buy a big map and Dave hangs it on a wall. Jade hands John a thumbtack.

He’s reminded of an apple and a meteor-his hand carded over his eyes to block out the encroaching conflagration’s light.

He closes his eyes, swings and throws.

_We make our own luck._

It lands.

Dave squints.

“Dude, you just made Derek Jeter cry on his slacks,” he says. “That landed on ocean.”

Jade shakes her head. “Nope,” she replies. “Look closer.”

John, Dave and Rose crowd around the red thumbtack.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dave says, his Texan poking through.

“That’s a _place_?” John asks.

***

They move into a little city called Singapore.

Jade steps off the plane and gasps involuntarily when she exits the airport.

She knows gold minarets and ivory queens, but this is a whole another bowl of apples. Once they hit the road, they see streets spilling over with people.

Her spatial recognition goes haywire. She’s built up to a skyscraper before, in Sburb, seen the blueprints for yellow towers, but never anything like this, steel and glass in clear spotless slabs. Man-made and cold.

Then it hits her, finally, how far from her island she is, despite the familiar sun beating down on her head. There’s barely anything lush, green and wild. Only buildings. There’s no stone temple or fauna or lake or Bec-

She swallows.

***

Jade picks the National University of Singapore to do mechanical engineering. Rose studies English Literature in the same school. Dave goes to Lasalle to produce and John goes with him. He wants to become a comedy screenwriter.

Jade and Rose buy an apartment together, a nice one near Orchard Central with a balcony and three rooms. They don’t tell John the price because he’s already insisting they have to save money(they will never have to save money for the rest of their lives). He and Dave bought another one in a nearby development-they’re practically neighbors.

Their real estate agents eye them with suspicion when they buy them without any negotiation over the price.

“Rich, dead parents,” one of them whispers to another when they think Rose is out of earshot.

“It’s an unfair exchange for godhood, but I’ll accept the meager compensation nonetheless,” Rose had said when they’d first checked their bank accounts. John had fallen over in astonishment.

***

The first night no one can sleep. Everyone agrees to sleep over-or stay awake together- at Jade and Rose’s. 

They’re all gathered around the one coffee table in the living room with cold beers.

“This place is fucking _sweltering._ I can feel my asscheeks deposit Niagara Falls every other minute. It’s a hundred goddamn degrees. The sun isn’t even up anymore. Why the fuck did the thumbtack land on a tropical island that literally only has one season?”

Jade throws a pillow at him.

“I wish America had used the universal metric system in our time,” Rose says, wrinkling her nose. “It’s going to be hard to learn kilometers instead of miles. Kilograms as well. Not to mention the sudden currency conversion. Also, it would be useful for us to learn Mandarin during our stay.”

“I’m not used to the cars honking all the time,” John says.

“I can’t fall asleep without the sound of running water in the background. It was always constant and now it’s too quiet without Rainbow Falls.” Rose mutters.

Dave swallows in the quiet that follows. The silence has him so tense you could use a wirecutter on him and he’d give. He says, “This place ain’t nothin’ like Houston, that’s for sure.”

“It’s all just…urbanization,” Jade says, lingering by the balcony parallel to the living room. “I miss hearing crickets at night.”

A silence follows.

John says, after a few moments, “This weather is terrible. My shirt is already wet from sweat. How is it so humid? I miss Washington. Hey, Dave, you don’t mind if I sleep in the nude, right?”

“DUDE,” Dave squawks, and Rose laughs so hard she falls off the sofa.

***

School begins and they’re pegged as tourists or international students from the get-go, lost in the sea of people and train stations and always asking for directions. Jade learns the quickest out of all of them. John calls her witch, all affection, and she replies, _fly boy, it’s not my fault you can’t keep up!_

***

Jade makes friends with an androgyne teen in one of her business classes. Rose finds them in the shadow of a tree during one of their free periods, zir head in her lap.

“Hi, Jade,” Rose greets.

Jade squints up at her. The daylight is blinding. “Hey, Rose!”

Zir sits up and smiles at Rose. “Who’s this, Jade?” ze teases, and Rose sends zir an examining look. Ze laughs. There’s a pentacle tattooed on zir wrist, and seeing it brings reminiscent chills to her spine.

“This is my best friend of all time, Rose.”

Ze stands up, brushes non-existent dirt off zir pants and proffers zir hand. “Hi, my name’s Li Xuan.”

“Pleasure.”

Ze flashes a smile at her. 

“Likewise.”

\--

Ze turns out to be the first real friend they make.

After eating lunch with them for a few weeks, ze asks about how they’re liking the city so far.

Rose makes an ‘eh’ gesture with her hand. “Haven’t seen much of it, actually-”

Jade tells zir how long they’ve been here as an explanation.

“You guys only got here a few days before term started? That excuse doesn’t hold water, luv. You’ve never been here before and all you’ve been doing is mugging?”

“Mugging???” Jade asks.

“Oh, the slang for studying. You _are_ fresh off the boat, aren’t you? That’s it,” ze claps zir hands together. “I’m taking you lot _everywhere.”_

“I didn’t know you freelanced as a tour guide,” Rose says, smirking.

Jade looks over at her for a moment, as if to say, _Rose! Rude._ Li Xuan just shrugs it off, though.

“It’s a career option I could consider,” Li Xuan says, lifting one carefree shoulder almost to zir ear, calling attention to zir hair. It’s cropped short and black; ends of it burgundy. Ze’s got the effortless sharp style everyone around zir tries to emulate; wears shirts and bowties most of the time and pulls it off beautifully. “Come on, you guys are effing geniuses. Take a break, and let me show you some _real_ fun.”

“That sounds cool! I'll do it.” Jade then looks over at Rose, her expression open, expecting nothing less but a hell yeah. 

Rose smiles. “Alright.”

To her surprise, Jade barrels over and hugs her, then looks over at Li Xuan.

“Whoa, no hugs for me, girl,” ze says. “I’m not the kind.”

Jade pouts and interlinks her arm with zir’s.

“When do we start?”

Zir's responding smile reminds Rose of Dave's crooked grin.

“Now.”

\--

Li Xuan takes them everywhere, from the end of the red train line to the green one. They bear witness to the lights in central Orchard to the opalescent glamor of the Marina Bay Sands, down to the club scene that surrounds Raffles Place, Clarke Quay and Tanjong Pagar. Each ‘party’ train station is so close to each other Rose deems the cluster of them the Electric Infinity.

Ze also takes them to malls and shows them how to navigate; which big-name stores sell what, and how to order coffee in Malay.

The people are loud and rude and always rushing somewhere. Rose is reminded of central New York sometimes and it gets on her nerves. Then Jade will point out something new and grin. She always means her smiles so much, Rose can’t help but laugh too.

However, she isn’t used to the blatant looks they get.

Jade’s a Malay girl and Rose is a Caucasian-Asian mixed girl. They get a _lot_ of stares simply by being together, and Li Xuan’s androgyny doesn’t help.

Singaporean society’s already cast judgment. Jade is too loud and beautiful and wild, and why is a girl taking a mechanical engineering degree? Especially one with a darker skin tone then they’re used to.

Rose particularly doesn’t like how hollow all the conversations seem to be. Productivity’s the game, and living is the name they call it as they all hurry to work themselves to death.

At one point an old lady gives Li Xuan the stink eye and ze snaps, “Take a picture, _ah ma_ , it’ll last longer,” and the old lady curses at zir at Hokkien but avoids zir eyes for the rest of the train ride. Rose finds herself regarding the people with some distaste after that. Jade just shakes her head.

Still the city swallows them up with jagged steel skyscraper teeth. Women and men who serve at the food courts call them ‘beautiful girls’ in Mandarin, tell them stories of the cowherd and the girl weaver. They read books that tell them of the Pontianak, ghosts and more Southeast Asian myths; of Sun Wukong and his golden staff.

The city is near teeming to the brim with _potential_. Tell Rose stories of magic and monsters and she itches at the seams, hungering for something she thought she was done with. Power calls out to her in every midnight movie theatre, every sidewalk crack, there is _so much light._ They may not be gods anymore, but she can _feel_ it. In the reflection of the glass doors of train stations she can see the paths before her(not as clear as before and it frustrates it bites it _s_ tings).

There is culture buried in the ground that still calls out to be remembered, and the city near collapses under the weight of its many stories. That’s Rose’s currency: _stories._ That’s easy water for her to tread.

She picks up the city with a sense that rivals Jade’s once she starts testing the limits of her powers.

She doesn’t know what her destination ever is, but her instincts always pick out the best route. A beautiful café, a hole-in-the-wall bookshop, and if the gang is ever looking for a certain place she can always lead them there in five minutes.

It’s nothing close to godhood. But it’s something, at least.

\--

“If you point at the moon, it’s said that God will fly down and cut your tongue out,” someone tells them.

“Changi is haunted! I swear! I went to a party near there once and-”

Ghost stories and e-cigarettes mix together after clubbing, and the scientific metropolis of Singapore reveals its hand; here be dragons and spirits, come one, come all. Rose tries to learn every myth and with it, her powers come easier.

\--

John and Dave come along for the ride. They’re all 18, old enough in the eyes of the law to drink. They get themselves sick in neon electric clubs in Clarke Quay that never seem to close. After, they eat lor mee and prata at coffee shops that open till 5 am. It’s a blurred time of parties, alcohol and dancing.

At the end of their third month John’s dating some girl that he met at a party.

Dave, Rose and Jade watch him get whirled away by her on the dance floor on Friday night, and all of them avert their eyes.

\--

They try to fall in love with other people.

Dave jokes around, swipes left on every girl on Tinder, pretends he only dates Libras and Cancers. It’s sad and funny at the same time. A few times Rose has classmates coming up to her asking for his number, they’ve seen him before when he picks her up in his car, he’s cute Rose, is he single?

She just laughs in their faces. _What do you think this is, Pride and Prejudice?_

With Jade, it’s so fucking easy and so fucking hard at the same time. Her heart is a hibiscus, hyperspeed-bloom. Rose uncharitably thinks that each time, each boy or girl or whoever in between or not in the binary, it’s like watching a nature documentary rewind and repeat on fast forward. But she saves most of her derision for Jade’s partners.

Each time they chip away at her heart like it’s a diamond mine and Rose wants to tell them they’re _wronging an omniscient being of space_. Don’t they know karma, these new age hippies slinging words around their teeth?

Rose expects Jade to cry her heart out each time. But the fact is none of them can cry anymore. 

Jade just smiles brightly at the end of every break up, says, _oh well_ , and she says to Rose later that she never really loved any of them. She tried. But she didn’t.

Rose, oh, Rose tries but she can be an ice cold _fucking_ queen. She doesn’t drop guard around anyone but Jade, Dave and John.

Her partners notice. They stop laughing when she tries cracking jokes or makes self-deprecating witty banter past the one month mark.

She looks at them and she thinks, _punctuation marks and question noodles_.

They don’t ever last long.

\--

The only love of theirs that sticks around is the city.

How did they fall in love? Let them recount the ways-

For Jade, it was the first intake of breath as the MRT train rolled out of the underground and into the light. Snap your fingers and you were there; love, or the next train station. It was also the sheer _weirdness_ of the architecture that Li Xuan pointed out to her.

“Look at that, Jade. Look at that bs. Rome has the Vatican, New York has the Empire State Building, we have a Supreme Court that looks like a UFO stuck on a building. Our commercial theatre looks like a durian. Spiky fruit, pungent as fuck, overall a _stupid_ thing for a goddamn theatre to look like but what can ya do…”

But she loves the little natural things the most. She takes walks in the reservoir trails, loves skating in the parks, sometimes goes on boats just to float in the middle of the ocean. She loves finding skyroofs and gardens. She’s even started a little hanging garden in the apartment.

For Rose, she doesn’t know when and where neutral indifference faded into a bone-deep haunt. The city stained itself into her, from the godalmighty messy mix of languages to the pools of bright orange-yellow light the streetlamps leave everywhere at night.

The sun never sets until it’s at least 7 pm and when it rises it blurs everything into camera-flash brightness. It’s her Land, for a moment, at noon, when the sun bleaches everything, and then she blinks. Sometimes she’s happy it’s not the same.

The city is a speed demon riding down gravel in a bicycle all tricked out with neon lights and trailing rainbow streamers, spitting out metal cylinders packed full of sweat and flesh and watchful eyes and cameras that incessantly flash on and off at inappropriate times.

It’s a monsterfucker, and Jade declares she loves it.

\--

One night Rose hears Jade _howl_ in her bed, and her first thought is _shit the neighbors are going to complain_. Then she’s got the decency to be ashamed.

She finds her thrashing around in her bed and her sheets are torn, her eyes are still closed. Then she quiets. Rose, disconcerted, waits for a couple minutes, then decides to wake her up.

“No, stop, go away,” Jade mutters. Rose just nudges her harder. “What?!” she screams, her eyes still closed, and Rose flinches.

“Jade, I just wanted, you were screaming-”

“I saw Prospit,” she says, raw and angry. “I didn’t want to wake up,” she mumbles, and Rose knows that she would never say this awake. She’s half asleep and there’s tears drying down her cheeks.

“I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to wake up. Why did you wake me up, Rose, just let me _sleep_ ,” Jade says, anger seeping through her voice now, and her voice on the last word makes Rose afraid and sad all at once.

Rose stays with her until she finally falls back asleep, stroking her hair, feeling guilty and like she wants to run away as far as she can.

The next morning they roll out, pretend nothing’s happened.

\--

One night, Rose meets Li Xuan at a bar named Insomnia down by City Hall.

“Where’s Jade?” Li Xuan asks.

“Asleep,” Rose says. “It’s just the two of us tonight.”

\--

Halfway through drinks Li Xuan asks, “Do you want me to do something?”

“About?”

“I see the way you look at her, you know.”

Rose knocks back her martini. “What’s your proposition?”

“I can cook up an aphrodisiac, if you’d like.”

And she nearly knocks it back up. “What?”

Li Xuan breaks out laughing. “Oh god, I’m sorry, no. No, that’s misleading magic, and dubious besides.”

“So you are a wix, then,” Rose says, looking at zir in measure.

Li Xuan smiles at her. “I could sense something about you, you know. You done this before?”

“Something like that.”

Li Xuan removes a wooden box from zir backpack. Tarot cards.

“Well then. An urban wix and a foreign witch step into a bar…”

\--

Li Xuan teaches her all about a different kind of witchcraft than the one she grew up with, more utilitarian, less horrorterrific.

“It’s primarily about _mind,_ you see,” ze says. “Think of it more softcore and less drastic fucked-up results. I’m not as intense as others, of course-my blood doesn’t have enough witch in it. But I do what I can.”

It starts with small things. Rose starts imbuing her makeup with intention. Lipstick-red for dominance and power, coral for warmth and receptiveness, pink for femininity and deception. Her eyeliner, she uses as a ward for protection. Then she’s sharpie-ing runes on her shoes for speed, lightness of foot, movement. Starts collecting topsoil to keep in jars for spells that require burial-spells to make the trains she catches run on time, to prevent her cabs from getting stolen from her.

She uses tic tac containers to keep her spices.

She wants to tattoo the inner tube map onto her wrists, redline-blueline-greenline smearing away her lifeline, her loveline, her palms wrinkled with steel cars. She paints her eyelids with green, dabs her lips in gold, her cigarettes coming away with marks of glitter. There’s so much magic here, in between the cracks, pockets of potential hiding in the shadows and when the sunlight hits every skyscraper at 6:53 pm at sunset.

Her luck starts turning. It’s funny, she’s rational, but she swears-something seems to be happening. A shift of balance, and the crosswalks turn greener faster, her trains always come on time, her sight becomes clearer when she tries to scry. And she looks around her and thinks: city occultism and not a dark one in sight.

\--

It all seems to be going well until Rose checks the date.

April 12.

She gets out her ID and her phone, starts dialing.

\--

Dave, the lightweight, passes out in the middle of doing shots. John hauls him into a taxi.

Rose keeps drinking and Jade tries to stop her after it’s 2 am.

She’s brusque, nothing like Kanaya was, patient and sweet. Jade grabs the bottle right out of her hand, goes to the open window and drops it straight. The glass shatters 10 stories down.

“I need a smoke,” Rose mutters, and Jade follows her outside with the key. Rose grabs a small bottle of something on her way out.

They reach the lobby and Jade opens her mouth and Rose cuts her off.

“No. No, you don’t understand, I want it back. I want it _all back_ ,” and her words burst out like fists, and the sound is visceral. It cuts to bones, all sinew and anger and regret. “No, no-take it back, take it all back, if I can’t have it then I want it _gone_ , I don’t want to remember. This isn’t happening. None of it happened, I don’t remember I don’t remember I don’t remember, the magic helps but it’s not _enough it’ll never be enough-_ ”

“FUCK!” She screams. The bottle she’s holding is a wet smear on the brick wall, the crashing sound like a slap. “You don’t fucking _get_ it, Jade, okay?!”

Jade seizes her by the shoulders and shakes her so hard that Rose hurts. Rose’s jolted, cold and freezing, and she’s afraid. For which one of them, she doesn’t know. Neither of them are very sober, but Rose is now.

“I don’t get it?!” she yells. “How do you think I feel? I pushed you all into a game that killed all of us a thousand times over and you’re telling me _I don’t get it_? All of us lost things, but guess what? I didn’t just lose a _girlfriend-THE GAME WAS MY WHOLE LIFE!_ ”

“Jade-”

Jade lets go of her and turns away for a few seconds while Rose dithers. She turns around with a wide smile, shaking her head a little.

“Sorry about that, Rose! I just lost my temper a bit. Don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.”

Rose watches, confused, as she goes back inside.

***

TT: John? I need your help.

EB: okay

EB: where do you want to meet?

***

There’s a post-it note on the fridge when Jade gets back from her meetings. It’s lavender cursive, of course. Jade bought her that set of gel pens when they first moved in.

“Jade:

I watered all the plants today. There’s some dinner in the fridge, those chicken wings from Thompson you like. Eat some and go to bed, you need rest. Even mechs need sleep.

Love,

Rose”

There’s a glitter smiley face written near the bottom of it, and Jade smiles.

“Dummy,” she says to no one.

The ceiling fan they have in the kitchen whirs. It’s hot and she can taste a storm on the horizon.

***

They meet at a McCafe. They exchange pleasantries, then Rose decides to stop delaying the actual conversation.

“How was Jade when you were with her?”

“On the ship, you mean?” John says, sipping coffee, not missing a beat.

“Yeah.”

“She dated Davesprite. She played Ghostbusters with me when I asked.”

“Did she ever…was she ever…did she have nightmares?”

John considers her. “We all had-have nightmares, Rose. What is this about?”

“It’s just that last night we had an argument and now she’s in _explicit_ denial. Some mental malady is clearly weighing on her mind. I thought it best to consult you.”

John looks at her. “Rose,” he says slowly. “Rose, Jade has been through so much shit we can’t even understand.”

She looks at him. “What do you mean?”

“She’d rather die than ever let me tell you this, so keep this a secret, okay?” he says.

She crosses her heart, rolling her eyes.

“I mean, like-she killed her grandfather when she was just a baby. She grows up all alone in an island, knowing about the game but never being able to tell us. She becomes the most powerful out of all of us and then poof, it’s like the game never happened. She lived by herself for thirteen years preparing for it and now it’s over. She’s my sis, Rose-I know her. She’s stubborn as hell. She would never tell any of us that she’s fucked up in the head right now. But-c’mon. She juggled entire planets for fun. Then we go back to acting like nothing happened?”

He whistles. “I’d be _so pissed._ ”

Rose blinks several times, processing this. She looks down at her cup of coffee.

“When did you get so good at reading people?” she says, smiling sadly.

“That’s totally an exaggeration, dude,” he says. “We were stuck with each other for three years. Of course I know Jade. And-well. I’m just not a doofus when it comes to my sister.”

He winks at her.

She ignores that pointedly. “John, I-I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her.”

He sighs. “Just…give her some time, I guess.”

\--

“I miss magic,” Jade says.

It’s 3 am on a Sunday and both of them are still awake. Rose has been trying to hide it from her, keeping her jars of topsoil in her room and hiding her new tarot deck underneath her bed. She continues to sip her tea and bend over her laptop like Jade’s said nothing, waiting for the inevitable busted.

They’re both pretending to work on their college assignments. Both of them finished them ages ago, though. Jade’s close to making her professors-all of them-cry. Rose is looking up stuff about necromancy. Jade’s Googling puppy images.

“I know you think I don’t,” Jade says, blunt. “I abandoned my witchcraft FOR SCIENCE. I’m like Dorothy with the red slippers, except I didn’t give it up for Kansas.”

“Truly, I would’ve derived much more enjoyment from the alternative version where she’d have given it up for relativistic quantum field theory and mechanical engineering.”

“Rose.”

“What are you-”

“I want to help you, duh,” Jade says.

Rose takes a deep breath and places her hand, ever so gently, on Jade’s.

“It’s petty money for the way we used to gamble our lives,” she says nonchalantly, “but a substitute is better than nothing. Will you make magic with me?”

“Took you long enough, geez!”

Rose laughs. It sounds close to bitter. “It did,” she says. “I can’t do this without you, Jade.”

\--

Rose flips a coin and snatches it out of the air as it comes down, face down on her palm. Jade doesn’t even have to ask her who she’s thinking of, tonight.

She breathes on it, warm carbon-dioxide bronchial-tube through lips. She mouths something to the cold metal, charging it with whatever she’s thinking of.

Prays that the Seer on the other side is still charging killers with a scratched piece of silver to this day.

Jade lets a few minutes go by before hauling her feet up on the ledge, dangerously teetering on the edge of the rooftop. Rose doesn’t flinch, but she looks up at Jade with a question in her eyes.

“There’s so much energy here, Rose,” Jade says, her arms like tracing the edges of a wall clock. The rising of each hand, clockwise, counterclockwise, ten to two. “I hated it here at first. It’s all so mad and wild, and I lived in a jungle. But there’s so much here, just waiting to be used.”

“What will you do?” Rose is standing by her, watching her shimmer and shift. The city lights her backdrop, a luminous circle of brightness. Moving, almost as if under water, shining.

“I’m a witch and an engineer, Rose,” she says, grinning, her wolf’s teeth fully free and undomesticated. “Both use energy regardless of method. This place is a powerhouse in every way. I’ll do what I have to. I'm going to have some fun."

\--

Jade helps her put sigils around; to protect the places they love, like the café down on Oxford Street, and the preservation of the park near Union Square. They use moss graffiti on the walls and charge the sigils with spray bottles they keep in their bags every time they visit.

Rose passes on Li Xuan’s urban myths-tells Jade that if you hold your breath while crossing under a bridge, you make a wish on the other side and the stories of standing under the mango tree.

Li Xuan brings them books, tells them more supernatural stories; about bomohs and exorcisms, about the couple that once killed three children in a HDB and then each other. Ghost stories and traditions to regard during Hungry Ghost Festival, like-not to whistle, to not sit at the front row at _ge tais_ (Chinese operas) because they’re reserved for the ghosts. To never eat the food left out in the open during that month because they’re for the ghosts. To never look in the mirror at night either or the ghosts will take your soul.

Some of the myths seem absurdly silly yet weird at the same time. They make friends with other classmates who recount to them the ‘marble phenomenon’ of Singapore.

“At night, if you live in a HDB, and you hear the sounds of marbles being dropped on the floor above you, the place is said to be haunted,” A Malay boy tells them.

“I’ve heard it too! I would call my best friend and tell her about it and she would _freak out_ because who even plays with marbles at 2 am?” a classmate interjects.

Jade’s staying over at Li Xuan’s once when she hears it. The tik-tik-tak sound of marbles careening around on a flat surface.

“Li Xuan!” she yells. “Not funny!”

Ze’s in the bathroom, and there’s no reply.

She pesters Rose.

GG: THE MARBLES THING IS REAL

TT: Yes, I do believe the children’s toy is a genuine solid form of entertainment. I require no further convincing, thank you.

GG: rose you doof

GG: they were telling the truth!!! i heard it!!! it’s 2 am and there’s a ghost upstairs playing marbles!

TT: Jade, we once watched the earth implode.

GG: yeah, but ghosts, rose

GG: ghosts!!!

***

Rose and Li Xuan look at each other, then at Jade. She’s got a tank top on, shorts and just gloves on, looking at their circuit box like a shrine.

“It’s not going to work,” Li Xuan says. “Girl, I read about you and the cards say you’ve got hella power -”

Jade and Rose slant eyes at each other and then away.

“-but this is insane. You’ll get electrified.”

“That’s the point,” Jade huffs.

“Rose?” Li Xuan asks her, arms folded.

She simply shrugs.

“I’m just going to reroute some of this into my external battery, hopefully make it look like some freak power outage in our house or something instead, it’ll be fine,” Jade mumbles, or something approximating that sentence.

Rose puts her hand to her head. “You really are Tony Stark in disguise.”

Jade holds up three fingers and Rose and Li Xuan scramble onto the couch as she counts down. She plugs her USB external battery into the main power socket.

There’s a few sparks that go off, and then silence. Li Xuan makes to get up and starts to say something-

The whole place goes entirely black.

Their entire apartment lights up like a carousel for a few seconds, blindingly bright, then everything flickers back to normal.

“Well, that didn’t work.” Jade says, her hair standing on end, smelling a bit like she’d been fried.

“Wait-everything went dark just now. Not just us.” Li Xuan says.

They get on their phones and check the news.

Turns out the whole city went black for five seconds, then lit up emerald before returning to normal.

Rose looks at Jade.

Her hands are shaking, like a junkie coming off some delirious high, like she’d just killed something with her bare hands.

“Holy shit, Jade,” ze breathes. “You’re a fucking technomancer.”

\--

They find others. It’s almost like a game now, but _game_ is a dirty word neither of them will utter. Runes and messages smeared with chalk on the skate park wall behind Orchard. Question mark stickers flashing red in void decks and on the inside of train tunnels.

Online bloggers posting about what’s going on with the rise of graffiti.

Jade finds QR codes in bathrooms that, when she opens them up, reveals spells and messages. Coordinates to meet-they start finding little covens, pockets of magic that were there before them.

The magic community grows.

\--

Jade starts bringing home old vintage TVs. She irritates one of her classmates-Nizzar-to teach her how to take them apart until he does, and one day Jade comes home to bits and pieces scattered all over the living room. Jade’s built her own TV out of scrap parts and hardware store purchases, and when she plugs it in, the screen reflects her face like a mirror. Rose is behind her, and Jade tosses her the remote, perfectly aimed. Rose performs a SWEET CATCH! And turns on their own modern television.

Instead of showing BBC News, the last channel it was on, their TV only shows static. Then it flickers for a second and shows Jade’s face in blurry pixels for a second, then flickers back on to BBC News.

“So, you know the local military usually displays signals across all the televisions in the country to tell soldiers to get back to base?”

Rose nods. They’ve commented on them before, the green icons that suddenly appear in the middle of How I Met Your Mother. Their local friends explained they were calls to base-and that they were for _every_ television.

“I got in.”

“Someone tell Anonymous there’s a girl in Singapore giving them a run for their money.”

Jade flashes her a smile.

\--

Rose and Jade find out quickly how different their magic is. Rose is all about _direction_ and the best possible outcome-which comes as no surprise. Jade’s scope is as broad an expanse as the ocean they’re surrounded by. Even without magic Jade knows more about technology than half of her own teachers. It’s only when she can’t dismantle stuff in public or manually does she tweak with magic – the cashier machine suddenly gets fixed when she’s next in the checkout line all the way to being able to make security cameras malfunction.

Li Xuan looks at her with awe. “Who _are_ you?”

It’s exhilarating.

\--

After the first few experiments, after Jade starts appearing on everybody’s TV when she’s never even been near a video camera, Dave calls Rose. They meet at Starbucks.

“I thought you’d talk her off this new age wiccan shit. She shouldn’t be going anywhere near that. Next thing you know I’ll be bringing her blood martinis to her coffin like a bellboy on hellhound island. Room service, Rose. I don’t want to be her hotel bitch.”

“You thought I would stop her,” she says, words dawning in her mouth before her brain can even scramble to catch up. “You thought I would pull her down from-”

“She’s fucking with the government. She could get-aw, fuck. Who am I kidding? That shit is the bomb and she should definitely keep going, but there’s more than that. She’s messing with supernatural stuff, Rose, and I-” she watches him as he bites down on the words. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Because she clearly can’t take care of herself.” She snarls.

“This is some fucked up shit, sis,” he tells her. Tells _her._ As if she didn’t learn her lesson the first time.

“Oh, _do_ go on. Your precious wolfgirl doesn’t know what she’s getting into. She has no idea.”

He flinches and she thinks _good_ before continuing. “After all, this is magic. With a k, if you’d prefer to be pedantic. This is the same fucked up shit that made me undergo a transmutation bordering on Lovecraftian. Simply put, you think the girl you _like_ has gone in too far over her head dealing with things she doesn’t comprehend and you want to save her as always, Knight. They stripped you of the cape, not your complex.”

“Fuck off, Rose,” Dave says, knuckles tightening. “I don’t have to listen to this shit.”

“Then _leave_ ,” Rose replies, razor edged.

He gets up to leave, walks a couple steps, then turns around.

“You like her,” he says after a beat, eyes wide in revelation.

She clenches her teeth and takes a breath. Closes her eyes.

“Regardless of whatever homoerotic fantasy you’ve cooked up-”

“Aw, shit, no, Rose, you don’t get to fuckin’ _dodge_ ,” he says, nearly crows, almost as if this is funny. Almost as if this is the most hilarious joke he’s ever heard. “I think Sappho just rolled over in her grave just to give you a fist bunp.”

“If someone’s done changing the subject-”

He’s nearly laughing now, his mouth twitching at the sides. That’s akin to bellowing laughter for him, and she’s close to hitting him now. He covers his eyes with his hand and he doesn’t look up at her for a long while until she says, waveringly, the air having shifted, “Dave?”

“How long?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“ _How long?_ ”

She looks away.

“I really don’t know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What am I going to do?” she echoes. “Nothing. That’s what I’m going to do.”

She holds up her hand before he says anything else. “If you’re going to call me a coward, let me pre-empt you. I know precisely what it is that I am. Coward, probably. Ready to have my heart broken again? Not a chance in hell.”

“Who’s ever _ready,_ Rose?” he asks her tiredly.

“Fair point,” she concedes. “But let’s be honest for once, since we’re so adamantly bad at it. Do you really think Jade looks at _either_ of us that way? At anyone at all?”

His silence is answer enough.

“She doesn’t deserve us vomiting our feelings all over her. We trample over her own enough as it is.” Dave says, pinching the skin between his eyebrows.

What else is there to do but nod?

\--

“Some nights I still think this is all a dream,” Jade tells her. “The ones I never had. The ones that are fake. I’ll wake up. I’ll still be in my bed and Bec will be alive.  I’ll get on my computer and tell you all about the crazy dream I had. Or I’ll click my heels together, and say, _there’s no place like home_ , and we’ll be back where we started.”

 “Some days I think that was the dream-real life, the game, whatever happened before this. We’ve always been here, and there’s never been anything else. I believe it sometimes, and then I remember her and I feel like a coward.”

“You are _not_ a coward,” Jade says forcefully. “Rose, you are one of the bravest people I know.”

Then Jade’s face contorts even more pitifully. Rose raises her hands to her cheeks and realizes she’s been crying. Jade comes over and hugs her and Rose weakly tries to swat her away and then she’s being engulfed in a strong hug.

“Shhh, shhh. You big beautiful magical dork.”

“Oh my _god,_ Jade,” Rose says, her voice nearly breaking.

“You’re my best friend,” Jade says. “I’m here for you.”

Rose hides her face in Jade’s hair. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there before,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see _you_. You’re my best friend too. I’ll always be here for you.”

Jade says it, and maybe it’s not the way she wants it to mean, but it means the world to her nonetheless: “I love you.”

\--

The city’s a million things. The city’s got a thousand different names, San Francisco, Hong Kong, St. Petersburg, Singapore. The city’s a speed demon, the city’s an androgynous teenage wix, the city’s a hundred hibiscuses in bloom, the city’s graffiti splattered on sidewalks. The city’s cruel, the city sleeps in the day and wakes up at night to haunt you, the city’s madness.

But remember: the city’s love too.

**Author's Note:**

> As a native Singaporean: yes, all this is true. Some of the myths have been altered (mostly because they mutate from generation to generation) but these are the stories I grew up with.  
> Also, I apologize for the gratuitous location.


End file.
